When the Scottish Country Dance Society was formed in Glasgow on 26th November
1923, its first stated aim was to practise and preserve Country Dances as danced
in Scotland.
What were the Country Dances, what were their origins and how had they developed as a form of social dance?
The Country Dance has a number of characteristics.
It is a form of social dancing danced by a group of couples, nowadays usually
consisting of four couples, positioned adjacent to each other in two parallel
lines, the gentlemen facing the ladies.
An important feature of the longwise Country Dance is that it is progressive.
At the conclusion of each turn of the dance, the couple at the top, who begin
the dance, finish one place further down the set, eventually arriving at the
bottom of the set. Then each of the other couples in succession, having reached
the top, take their turn of the dance in order to progress to the bottom.
The Country Dance was, and still is, danced progressively mostly in longwise sets. There are, however, other dances which have been incorporated into the repertoire of country dancers. For example, there are those which have a square set formation, and others which have two couple sets and require the dancers to move progressively round the ballroom.
The Country Dance is composed of formations which are arranged in a different sequence for each dance. Having mastered the basic formations, it has always been contended that a country dancer should be able to participate happily and easily wherever there is country dancing.
Today, as in the past, the social character of the Country Dance is strongly emphasised. It is a form of dancing which enables the dancer to dance with and to meet many other dancers during the course of an evening's dancing.
" . . . . in them (Country Dances) all are alike partakers of the pleasure, - there are no silent, envious gazers, - no sullen critics to mar the amusement, or intimidate its votaries, - joyous gaiety animates every countenance, and, while pleasure beams in every eye.. the young and old are equally employed in forming the mazy circlets of the dance,"
Robert and Joseph Lowe, Teachers of Dancing, Glasgow, 1822
Although they have been the subject of much scholarly
speculation, there is still uncertainty about the origins of the Country Dance.
In Scotland the Country Dance probably began to be danced in the early years
of the eighteenth century.
This form of social dance had already been popular in England for more than
a hundred years; the first important collection of Country Dances was published
there by John Playford in 1651.
In fact the Country Dance acquired enthusiastic adherents in several European
countries and during the eighteenth century its universal popularity increased
greatly.
Evidence of this popularity can still be found and seen today. There are, in
several British towns and cities, eighteenth-century Assembly Rooms which were
constructed to accommodate the sets of the Country Dance. In Edinburgh, the
first public Assembly at which the Country Dances were performed was begun in
1723 and other Scottish towns and cities, Aberdeen, Glasgow, Inverness, Dundee,
Leith and Haddington, had all acquired their Assemblies by the 1780s.
Further evidence of the Country Dance's popularity 200
years ago is provided by the many published collections of Country dances.
These publications, many of which have been gathered together in libraries and
archives, contained the directions for the dances and the music to accompany
them. The collections were mostly printed and published in England.
The first such Scottish collection, which has survived, was that of John Bowie,
published in Perth in 1789.
There are in addition, several Scottish manuscript collections which further
testify to the popularity of the Country Dance in eighteenth-century Scotland.
An example of these is the Duke of Perth's MS, dated 1737 and written by the
Edinburgh Writing Master, David Young; it is to be found at Drummond Castle,
Muthill, Perthshire. Another example is the Castle Menzies MS, dated 1749 and
located in the Atholl Collection of the Sandeman Library, Perth.
Although essentially part of an international repertoire
of country dancing, the Country Dances danced in Scotland during the eighteenth
century did begin to develop their own distinctive Scottish characteristics.
There were dances, for example, which were described as "Scotch dances".
They were principally identified by their accompanying tunes which had Scottish
titles and which invariably gave their names to the Country Dances. Examples
of such dances are "Cadgers in the Canongate", "Cauld Kail in
Aberdeen", "The Duchess of Atholl's Slipper", "The Moudiewort",
and "Monymusk".
Detailed studies of the historical development of the Country Dance in Scotland and elsewhere have also revealed that the formations "set and turn corners followed by reels of three" were probably a Scottish contribution to the formations of the Country Dance.
In eighteenth-century Scotland another type of dancing,
namely the Reels, featured the reels of three and also reels of four.
In the Reels, three or four dancers alternated the dancing of the reel or figure
of eight with individual setting steps. The attachment of the Scots to their
Reels was never diminished by the popularity of the Country Dances.
"The general dance here (Edinburgh) is the reel which requires that particular sort of steps to dance properly of which none but the people of the country have any idea. The perseverance which the Scotch ladies discover in these reels is not the less surprising than their attachment to them in preference to all others. . . the moment one of these tunes is played, which is liquid laudanum to my spirits, up they start, animated with new life, and you would imagine they had been bit by a tarantula. . . The young people of England only consider dancing an agreeable means of bringing them together. But the Scotch admire the reel for its own merit alone, and may truly be said to dance for the sake of dancing."
Captain Edward Topham, a visitor to Edinburgh, 1774-75
Those who attended the grand and elegant Assemblies of Scotland's towns and cities were, of course, the prosperous members of eighteenth-century society.
It is, however, evident that the Country Dances as well
as the Reels were enjoyed by the lower classes of society particularly in the
countryside where the gathering places for dancing were much less imposing than
the Assembly Rooms of either Edinburgh or Glasgow.
Robert Burns, the son of a struggling Ayrshire farmer, attended a dancing school
in his youth.
Probably Scotland's most notable contribution to the tradition of country dancing is the strathspey rhythm which emerged in Scotland about the middle of the eighteenth century. With its characteristic "dotted" rhythm, the strathspey was uniquely Scottish. An eminent composer and exponent of the strathspey, as well as of reels and jigs, was Niel Gow (1727-1807). His compositions for the fiddle, the principal and most favoured instrument to accompany the Country Dances, paid tribute in their titles to the well known and leading personalities of Scottish society.
The years immediately following the conclusion of the
Napoleonic wars in 1815 witnessed the spread of two new forms of dance in Europe,
the waltz and the quadrille.
When faced with these competitors, the Country Dance displayed remarkable adaptability
by absorbing elements from both of these new dance forms.
Waltz Country Dance has survived to the present as an example of Country Dances
in waltz tempo.
The Quadrille, with its Country Dance formations presented in a square set,
was developed in France but quickly spread to other countries after 1815.
An amalgamation of the square formation of the Quadrille with elements of the
Country Dance, and also of the Reel, produced the universally known Eightsome
Reel.
Lord James Stewart Murray, 9th Duke of Atholl, who was President of the Royal
Scottish Country Dance Society for many years, maintained that the Eightsome
Reel was devised by a group of dancers gathered at Blair Castle in the early
1870s.
For most of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
it was considered that the leading exponents of all forms of dance were to be
found in France.
The influence which French dancers and teachers exerted upon social and theatrical
dancing was as evident in Scotland as elsewhere.
The effects of that influence have survived in Scottish Country Dancing to the
present day. Poussette, pas de basque and allemande have found a permanent place
in country dance terminology and the influence of the French ballet can be seen
in the use of the balletic foot positions to define the structure of the steps
of the country dancers.
The balletic influences are also evident in other forms of Scottish dancing, namely Highland solo dancing and Ladies' Step dancing; the latter, which are solo dances mostly dating from the first half of the nineteenth century, have enjoyed a considerable revival of interest in recent years with the encouragement of the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society.
The French influence was not limited solely to dancing
style and technique. The rules of ballroom etiquette, still observed by Scottish
country dancers, can probably be directly linked to the example set by French
dancers and teachers, especially those at the Court.
The ballroom guides which appeared in print in Scotland in the nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries invariably included some guidance to dancers about
how they should conduct themselves in the ballroom.
The Country Dance declined in popularity in Europe as
the nineteenth century progressed; other new social dances proved to be more
popular.
The exception to this decline was in Scotland where the Country Dance continued
to flourish alongside the new dances.
A number of reasons have been offered to explain this.
A tradition of dancing in the Scottish regiments, which has persisted to the
present day, helped to ensure the favoured position of the Country Dance, as
also did the support which it received from the Scottish nobility and gentry.
However, the Country Dance was not the exclusive monopoly of the privileged classes for it appealed to all sections of the population. Evenings of social dancing were occasions, especially in rural Scotland, when all levels of society came together to enjoy the pleasures of the Country Dance.
Credit for the continued popularity of the Country Dance
must also be given to the professional teachers of dancing.
Whilst not excluding the other fashionable dances of the time, they did not
neglect the Country Dance. In their classes, the dance teachers, who were predominantly
male, accompanied themselves on the fiddle and in the countryside where their
teaching was done on an itinerant basis, they were affectionately known as the
"Dancies".
By the outbreak of the First World War an unbroken tradition of country dancing had lasted in Scotland for more than 200 years.
Although by 1914 the number of very popular dances had in fact dwindled to a very few, they nevertheless appeared regularly on dance and ball programmes. The same dances were often repeated several times during an evening.
In the years immediately following the First World War, the Scottish Country Dance faced an uncertain future. Dances inspired by the syncopated rhythms of ragtime threatened to oust it entirely from the ballroom. It was due to the efforts of the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society that it survived this crisis and was restored eventually to national and international favour.